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Signs of suicide not always overt with teenagers

Tylar Lane with his long-term girlfriend. They had broken up before his suicide in February 2013, and she later told the family he had tried suicide before they started dating two years earlier.
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Second in an occasional series on suicide in North Central Massachusetts.

FITCHBURG -- Gami Lane remembers her son Tylar as an honor-roll student, a goofball, a guitar player and an easygoing kid who was always determined to meet his goals.

"I always thought it was a good thing that he was so determined," said Lane.

She lost her son to suicide in February 2013.

She's hoping that sharing her family's story will help other parents be aware of suicide issues in young people, and hopefully save lives.

In fall 2011, Tylar started going to Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School. He originally wanted to be a mechanic, but ended up wanting to be a sound engineer. Because the family lived in Athol, he had to take a MART bus to Gardner before taking a school bus to Monty Tech.

By his second year, he had befriended a pool of older students but rarely visited them outside of school. His family had moved around a lot, each time to a bigger place, and Tylar no longer had to share his room with his young brother Zachary. He spent a lot of time in his room, often playing his guitar.

Schoolwork had always come easy to Tylar, but as a 15-year-old Monty Tech sophomore, he started struggling with his classes. It was a new problem for him, and his mother said early 2013 brought several other issues. Their computer broke, which made it much harder for him to do most of his schoolwork, and he and his long-term girlfriend broke up.

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"The day that he passed would have been their two-year anniversary," said Lane.

On Feb. 9, the whole family was home in Athol during a snowstorm. Dad was shoveling out front, Tylar was playing guitar in his room, and Lane and Zachary, 9, were in the next room over. She wanted to walk their dogs but couldn't find the leash, so she and Zachary opened the door to Tylar's room to see if he knew where it was.

That's when they found him hanging from the end of the leash.

"I said Tylar, that's not funny," said Lane.

She quickly realized it wasn't a prank. The whole experience left her numb, and it all felt unreal.

"There was not one inclination that he was feeling that way," said Lane. "We didn't think anything was wrong."

It didn't make sense.

Tylar had recently helped stop one of his friends from committing suicide and stopped the friend from cutting himself while depressed, but after Tylar's death they discovered self-inflicted cuts on his legs. That explained why he stopped wearing shorts in the summer. Everything contradicted how he presented himself to his family.

In retrospect, Lane said she could see how he had become more withdrawn, but it was difficult to tell it apart from him just being a teenager who recently got his own room and wanted to spend time in it.

His ex-girlfriend later told the family that Tylar had tried to hang himself before they started dating two years earlier. It was a complete shock.

"Someone may look perfectly healthy on the outside, but they could be going through something horrible on the inside," said Lane.

Lane said as a mother, she always saw her children as people that would live beyond her and her husband, while her own parents would pass first. That alone was traumatic, but the pain was even more complicated by Tylar's suicide.

"It's so much different when that person chooses to leave you," said Lane.

Police later revealed that Tylar had typed a note on his iPhone, where he said the stress of school was too much and said he knows his family loved him, but he couldn't take it. He also complained about the family moving around so much and said that he never had a home.

John Salovardos, director of pupil personnel services in Gardner Public Schools, is a member of the Greater Gardner Suicide Prevention Task Force. He said with the high number of changes and stressful situation faced by high-school and even college students, it's easy to miss warning signs.

Many teens have changes in behavior as they experience puberty and hormonal changes, according to Salovardos. They are also going through a lot of stress with important standardized tests, applying for college, planning a career, more adult social relationships, starting a first job and getting a driver's license.

Stressful situations are also risk factors to suicide attempts. Salovardos said risk factors include family financial problems, parental divorce and separation and undiagnosed and untreated mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety.

"If a child is exposed to trauma, you bump up the risk factors," said Salovardos. Gay and lesbian teens are also more likely to commit suicide, especially if their family rejects them for their sexuality.

In Gardner Public Schools alone, Salovardos said there have been 39 suicide-related events from students that resulted in some form of treatment. That includes suicide attempts as well as interventions for students who had been considering suicide. It has been two years since a Gardner student suicide death.

Paul Richard, executive director of the SHINE Initiative, said out of about 600 known suicide deaths in Massachusetts in 2010, 78 were young people.

He said while northern Worcester County has a higher total suicide rate than the rest of the state, he'd rather people focus on paying attention to each other than become unnerved about its prevalence.

He said people need to treat all remarks about suicide as serious until proven otherwise, and when in doubt, ask someone if they're feeling OK. He said it's important to ask a distraught person whether he or she has been thinking about committing suicide.

"It's not going to push them or motivate them into attempting the act -- quite the contrary," said Richard. He said people who are considering suicide may benefit from someone who reaches out to them and shows compassion.

"Suicide is preventable; that's the key message here," said Richard. "One suicide is too many, and we need to pay attention to each other."

Lane said she feels a lot of guilt that she never said the right things to intervene and didn't provide him with the life he wanted. They had little money when he was born they kept moving to bigger and better homes because the family financial situation was improving.

They've tried to go to family support groups, but have trouble relating to families who lost children from accidents. She's had thoughts about committing suicide herself following Tylar's death, but credits her close relationship with her family, especially her son Zachary, in keeping her going forward.

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